Ma howled some probably-unkind troll curse before marching toward the kitchen bench.
“Old, slow, corpulent, revolting, abusive.” I rattled off the litany of the first words that came to my mind as the troll-mother lunged for a knife. “How did a monster like you make something as impressive as Bertha?”
Ma’s whole chest was heaving with rage, and spittle clung to her tusks and lips as she finally got her stubby fingers around a carving knife. Her feet crashed against the ground and her mounds of flesh rippled as she charged across the room. Only a few feet from striking distance, I prepared to cut her down with my gifted cleaver. The monstrous troll drew her arm back and aimed her carving knife to gut me.
Then she froze.
I was about to use the fortuitous opportunity to my advantage when I recognized the reason she’d stopped suddenly.
A howling cacophony of demonic cackling echoed through the exit. The ear-piercing noise bounced off the walls, turning Ma’s face a pale shade of green. Jeff and Bertha were locked in battle as they traded knees and headbutts, oblivious to the sounds.
I could have dealt with the frozen troll then and there, but I was too interested in these newcomers. She was obviously terrified, which meant this wasn’t Gavin or the guild.
In fact, I knew exactly who had caused her petrified state.
The cavalry.
The creature and his tribe had finally come to rescue me.
It was about damned time, too.
Chapter Nine
“Imps,” Ma muttered, her knife hanging loosely from her fingers. The demonic laughter grew louder, and she recovered almost instantly. “Jeff! Imps be coming!”
Jeff slammed his shoulder into Bertha and finally tore the poleaxe from her grip. He leaped between his mother and me, facing the exit. They obviously thought these imps were a greater threat than anything Bertha and I could throw at them.
First one, then two, then a whole cloud of bat-like creatures swarmed into the grotto; it was a teeming mass of bloated grey flesh, beating wings, teeth, claws, and grating screeches that sounded familiar.
They were no Infernal Dragon, but I’d take a golden opportunity when I could get it.
“Where is the dungeon core?” an imp demanded. His wings flapped as he hovered above the troll-mother’s head.
“You not be getting it!” Ma snatched the imp out of the air with a warted fist, smashed the creature into the wood of the table, and slit its throat with the carving knife intended for my face.
Then all hell broke loose.
The other flying creatures wailed at the loss of their comrade and swarmed the troll. The imps ripped at the mother troll with their talons and tore into her with their fangs. Blood sprayed from the wounds, but Ma ignored the lesions. Her carving knife swept through the air while her enormous left hand snatched imps in mid-flight and crushed them.
Still, they came, an onslaught of black hide and bone-white claws. They were everywhere, all over her, ripping at her skin, tearing at her eyes, and coating the flowery dress in dark blood. Ma’s screeches of pain added themselves to the noise reverberating in the cavern, and I breathed in the carnage.
I sought my champion and found Bertha already on her feet, but the incensed little devils weren’t following the game plan; they were attacking everyone and everything in sight.
I ducked under a swipe and watched my champion smack an imp out of the air as she charged for Jeff. She seemed uninterested in the potential new threat; she was still following my command with every ounce of concentration in her rippling body.
We needed to leave with haste, but the brother-sister pair was already grappling again. Bertha showed her training when she batted aside the stolen poleaxe with an elbow, leaped into the air, and smashed her knee into Jeff’s jaw. I almost heard the crunch of it cracking as he howled and reeled backward. Bertha wrenched her weapon from his suddenly-loose fingers and ripped the blade across his torso, rending flesh. A well-placed kick sent him smashing into the wall, and she raised the poleaxe, looking for the final kill…
“Bertha!” Ma screamed. “Leave him!”
With a deafening roar, Ma broke free of the imps and barrelled toward Bertha, murder in her eyes. As my champion looked to me for another order, I lunged to intercept her mother’s charge. Blinded by blood and pain, the troll-mother didn’t see me as I raced in from the right. I had to make this quick; my avatar was running out of time with each second, and if the imps kept this up, Bertha wouldn’t be able to escape the combined forces of her family and the hellspawn I’d convinced to come here as a distraction.
I dodged under Ma’s wide swing and caught a fistful of her blood-matted hair from behind. She roared and flailed her arms, her carving knife desperate to slash me open. I launched myself onto her back with my hands still gripping her hair and tugged to bare her throat.
Then my cleaver tore her stony flesh open easily. Ma’s skin felt more like leather than stone under the edge of Bertha’s weapon. I roared with triumph just as the she-troll’s elbow hit me. I grunted, felt my grip vanish, and crashed into the table, sending bloody meat and cleavers skittering everywhere. I rolled off the table and onto my feet, but when I went to finish off Ma, the imps swarmed in.
Suddenly, my world was nothing but beating, wings of leather and fucking sharp teeth. I felt them tearing at me as they tried to rip me to pieces. I’d lost Bertha’s blade somewhere in mid-air, but I forced through the thick of enemies and searched for a weapon that had fallen from the table.
My hand found something heavy and meaty. My fingers wrapped around a rolling pin large enough to be a two-handed club. There were no text boxes appearing in my vision, and I guessed Lilith had
